statistics quotes

The mystery is why we even collect these figures; if we kept similar statistics for Manhattan Island,Park Avenue could layawake at night worrying about its trade deficit.

- Robert Leroy Bartley
  On the balance of payments record. The Seven FatYears.

Statisticsarethetriumphofthequantitativemethod, and the quantitative method is the victory of sterilityand death.

- (Joseph) Hilaire Pierre Belloc
  The Silence of the Sea.

unless statistics lie he was more brave than me: more blond than you

- e e pen name of  Edward Estlin Cummings cummings
w,'i sing of Olaf glad and big'.

Statistics are designed to keep you safe.

-Jenny Diski
  Skating to  Antarctica.

Therearethreekindsof lies: lies,damned liesandstatistics.

- Benjamin, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield Disraeli
Attributed. Quoted in Mark Twain  Autobiography, vol.1 (published1924).

   For the rational study of the law the blackletter man may be the man of the present, but the man of the future is the man of statistics and the master of economics.

- Oliver Wendell,Jr Holmes
  'The Path of the Law', in the Harvard Law Review,10:469.

Politicians use statistics in the same way that a drunk uses lamp-postsfor support rather than illumination.

- Andrew Lang
  Speech. Quoted in  Alan L Mackay  The Harvest of a Quiet Eye (1977).

You cannot feed the hungry on statistics.

- David, 1st Earl Lloyd George (of Dwyfor)
  Speech advocating tariff reform.

There issuch a thing as luck.There issuch a thing as a run of luck. This is an instructive insight I have gained from pokerthat all things have a rhythm, even the most seemingly inanimate of statistics.

- David Alan Mamet
  Writing in Restaurants,'Things I Have Learned Playing Poker On The Hill'.

Science has, as its whole purpose, the rendering of the physical world understandable and beautiful. Without this you have only tables and statistics.

-J(ulius) Robert Oppenheimer
  In Look magazine.